The immigration of Lutheran Finns was promoted by Swedish authorities, who gained the area in 1617 from Russia, as the local population was (and remained) Orthodox.

[7] Ingrian is classified, together with Finnish, Karelian (including Livvi), Ludic and Veps, in the Northern Finnic branch of the Uralic languages.

The exact origin of Izhorians, and by extension the Ingrian language, is not fully clear.

[8] Most scholars agree that Ingrian is most closely related to the Karelian language and the Eastern dialects of Finnish, although the exact nature of this relationship is unclear: A popular opinion holds that the split of the Karelian and Ingrian languages can be traced back to around the 8th-12th centuries A.D., with the Ingrian language originating from a Pre-Karelian group travelling westward along the Neva river.

[9][10] The first Ingrian records can be traced back to the Linguarum totius orbis vocabularia comparativa by Peter Simon Pallas, which contains a vocabulary of the so-called Chukhna language, which contains terms in Finnish, Votic and Ingrian.

[10][12] During the Finnish national awakening in the end of the 19th century, as the collection of Finnic folk poetry became widespread, a large number of poems and songs were recorded in lands inhabited by Izhorians, as well, and ultimately published in various volumes of Suomen kansan vanhat runot.

Junus' grammar included rules for spelling and inflection, as well as a general description of the spoken Ingrian language.

[8] Upon return to the Soviet Union after the war, Izhorians were banned from settling their native lands, and were instead scattered across the nation.

[8] Due to the many repressions, deportations and war, the number of Izhorians, as well as Ingrian speakers, decreased dramatically.

Ingrian nominals distinguish between twelve cases, with a thirteenth (the comitative) only being present in nouns.

Ingrian adjectives often have a separate comparative form, but lack a morphologically distinct superlative.

Ingrian verbs feature four moods: indicative, conditional, imperative and the now rare potential.

Both dialects show various processes of consonant assimilation in voicing and, in the case of the nasal phoneme /n/, place of articulation.